13 to Life

I recently viewed a video post from youtube called "the girl who silenced the world for five minutes" and I was impressed to say the least. I don't think I've ever seen or heard a preteen speak with such intelligence, and conviction about anything more important than what color pants to wear to school. This young lady makes some heavy points and conveys her concerns without sounding like a jerk. She most likely had a bit of help from someone older than the few twelve to thirteen year old colleagues that she mentions, but still, she composes herself like an adult and never seems to be intimidated by the presence of all the diplomats to which she is speaking. That being said, I now want to change the focus a little.
What were you doing at thirteen years old? What occupied your thought time? I think that's when I tried my first cigarette and REALLY became interested in girls. Aside from that I spent most of my time listening to music and riding my BMX bike around the neighborhood. The point is, neither I or anyone that I knew was thinking about anything remotely as important as this girl and her friends. It made me look at my own daughter, only nine years old and she frequently is forced to muscle her way through migraine headaches, she is concerned that the food she eats was raised ethically and is periodically annoyed at how "boys get all the cool stuff". Don't get me wrong, she spends plenty of time just being a kid i.e. playing and having fun, but you see the point here.
We are making choices that we believe will enhance our lives, increase our comfort, and boost our bottom lines, we look at the future through money tinted glasses. We are failing to see the impact that the choices of ourselves and our predecessors is going to have on our kids. The popular form of thought seems to be that we can't make a difference, we can't fix things, they're too broken. To some extent that is true. We can't fix everything, we can't turn everything around, but we can make a difference, we can do something.
We cannot leave all our problems for our children to fix and we cannot leave them ill equipped to make better choices. What parent doesn't want their kid to have a better life than they did? Judging by the way we steward our world, none of us do.
We have changed the world in such a way that we are slowly stealing childhood from our kids, forcing them to worry and wonder about what comes next.
What we need to work on is teaching them by example, not just telling them but showing them how to better care for themselves, the people around them and the world they live in, maybe then they won't continue to break what they can not fix.